Adams, Shelley and Lovelady

[Martin Weidmann]

Martin, I've read "Girl On The Stairs" and I agree with you....  But the point is, there is no way to prove it.    At the end of the chapter it's still two conflicting stories.

Martin, I've read "Girl On The Stairs" and I agree with you....

I haven't read the book, but I understand from what I have read on the internet that Victoria Adams told Barry Ernest that she never said anything about Shelley and/or Lovelady in her testimony. I have given that some thought, especially in light of the fact that the original transcript of her testimony at the National Archive does contain the Shelley quotes, and I concluded that there must be another explanation. I don't think Victoria Adams lied to Barry Ernest but she spoke to him decades after the event and her memory may have been playing tricks on her.


But the point is, there is no way to prove it.    At the end of the chapter it's still two conflicting stories.

That's is no different than with many other issues in this case. Stories that have conflicted 50+ years ago still conflict now. All we can do is try to reconcile the information as best we can.

[Gerry Down]

I don't think Victoria Adams lied to Barry Ernest but she spoke to him decades after the event and her memory may have been playing tricks on her.

Women never lie 

[Martin Weidmann]

Women never lie 

Thank you for that very useful contribution.

[John Iacoletti]

Also, the landing between the two stairs wasn't every big. With a wooden floor and the women walking on heels, it would be highly unlikely that they could have passed by Truly and Baker unnoticed.

Also if somebody was in the stairwell dashing down the stairs while they were in the stairwell, they would have heard him.

[Ross Lidell]

I never saw this post. Is this the virgin or one of your many conquests? 

A lot of details: Well thought out, but as others have said, it cannot be proven as the only alternative. Again we see the possibility of timing discrepancies being a "possible" explanation for a perceived anomaly.

This is one of those matters that is peripheral to the actual assassination. It does not eliminate the existence of a 6th floor shooter (Oswald or the hitman). If you substitute the 6th floor shooter for Oswald, very little if anything changes in post-kill circumstances. One might ask: Why didn't Adams see the "hitman" on the stairs?

Incidentally, I'm not buying the preposterous theory that the "hitman" stayed behind on the 6th floor posing as a detective and then slipped out of the TSBD when the real cops were distracted with their duties.

[Martin Weidmann]

I never saw this post. Is this the virgin or one of your many conquests? 

A lot of details: Well thought out, but as others have said, it cannot be proven as the only alternative. Again we see the possibility of timing discrepancies being a "possible" explanation for a perceived anomaly.

This is one of those matters that is peripheral to the actual assassination. It does not eliminate the existence of a 6th floor shooter (Oswald or the hitman). If you substitute the 6th floor shooter for Oswald, very little if anything changes in post-kill circumstances. One might ask: Why didn't Adams see the "hitman" on the stairs?

Incidentally, I'm not buying the preposterous theory that the "hitman" stayed behind on the 6th floor posing as a detective and then slipped out of the TSBD when the real cops were distracted with their duties.

A lot of details: Well thought out, but as others have said, it cannot be proven as the only alternative. Again we see the possibility of timing discrepancies being a "possible" explanation for a perceived anomaly.

I am not sure what you are going on about. There is no "only alternative" to be proven. The WC dismissed the testimony of Victoria Adams based upon her seeing Shelley and Lovelady after coming down from the stairs. They never resolved how much time passed between Adams and Styles arriving on the first floor and them seeing Shelley and Lovelady there. So we are left with their testimonies and there clearly is a time discrepancy between two scenarios.

All I am trying to do is look at the only two options the available evidence provides us with;

1. Adams & Styles went down the stairs before Dorothy Garner saw Truly and Baker come up, in which case the combined testimony of Shelley and Lovelady shows conclusively that the girls couldn't not have seen them when they came of the stairs because both men were not ,and could not have been, there at around 12.31

or

2. Adams & Styles did see Shelley and Lovelady as they came down the stairs (which is what the WC claimed) which means that they must have waited on the 4th floor for several minutes after the shots, which does not compute with Adams' testimony and Garner's observation. Also, had they stayed up there, they should have seen Oswald running over the landing from stairs to stairs, which they didn't.

There are no more options, at least not that I am aware of. To reconcile both scenarios and do justice to all the available evidence, I would suggest that Adams and Styles did go down the stairs directly after the shots and before Truly and Baker went up. I would further suggest that Victoria Adams did indeed see Shelley (and Lovelady) on the first floor, but only after the two men got there, several minutes after the shots and not at the moment she and Styles arrived on the first floor. Adams just never communicated that time lapse correctly in her testimony.

Edit: On 11/24/63 Victoria Adams was interviewed by FBI agents Hardin and Scott. She told them that she and Styles immediately ran to the stairs after the third shot and left the building at the back directly after coming down the stairs. They ran towards the railroad yard where a policeman stopped them and told them to return to the building, which they subsequently did. With this in mind, it seems to me that it is highly unlikely that Adams could have seen Shelley and Lovelady immediately after coming down the stairs for the simple reason that both men's testimony shows that they were not and could not have been there at that time. However, it would be possible and plausible for Adams to have seen those men as she re-entered the building, several minutes later.

If my suggestion is true the WC got it wrong and dismissed Adams' testimony without cause. In that case Adams and Styles did go down the stairs before Truly and Baker came up, making it a very tight fit for anybody coming from the 6th floor to run down to the second floor unseen by anybody. If the suggestion is incorrect, I don't really see any other scenario that would provide a plausible explanation and do justice to all the available evidence.


This is one of those matters that is peripheral to the actual assassination. It does not eliminate the existence of a 6th floor shooter (Oswald or the hitman). If you substitute the 6th floor shooter for Oswald, very little if anything changes in post-kill circumstances. One might ask: Why didn't Adams see the "hitman" on the stairs?

None of this is really relevant to my question. Nobody claimed it eliminated the existence of a 6th floor shooter, but the answer to the contradiction in the testimonies does go towards the basic matter of Adams and Styles not seeing or hearing anybody on the stairs.

Incidentally, I'm not buying the preposterous theory that the "hitman" stayed behind on the 6th floor posing as a detective and then slipped out of the TSBD when the real cops were distracted with their duties.

As you are a contrarian, I expected no less that an outright denial from you, so there is no surprise there. Unlike you, though, I am not going to ask you for evidence in support of your "claim"! I bet you can't even explain why the theory is "preposterous" in the first place anyway. Nor am I going to tell you how I think you should respond to my posts, like you constantly do.

[John Iacoletti]

Ross really has a lot of trouble realizing that possibilities are just that.

And there are a lot of them.  Only Oswald has to be in the 2nd floor lunchroom 75-90 seconds after the last shot.  A different shooter could be anywhere when Adams and Styles went downstairs.  For example hiding on the seventh floor.  Or on the sixth floor for that matter.  And then coming down in the elevator when Truly and Baker were on the roof, for example.  in fact, the evidence is that somebody came down in the elevator during that time.

[Martin Weidmann]

Two more comments to make to add to the timeline;

1.
The stairs used by Adams and Styles, and allegedly also used by Oswald, were in the back of the building. Some years ago Discovery's "unsolved history" attempted to reconstruct the timeline between the shots and the Baker/Oswald encounter in the 2nd floor lunchroom. Although not a completely accurate reconstruction (they did not include the landings on each floor and used stairs that continued on downwards without interruption) the video IMO does provide us with a fairly reasonable estimate of how much time was roughly needed to get from the front windows of the building to the stairs in the back, which is about 25 seconds.

As Adams and Styles would have to cover nearly the same, if not exactly the same, distance as Oswald, who in the video is presumed to be the gunman, it can be argued that Adams and Styles as well as the gunman would have been at the top of the stairs, about 25 seconds after the last shot, albeit on the 4th and 6th floor respectively.

The video continues to show "Oswald" coming down the stairs (without taking account for the landings) and arriving at the door of the 2nd floor lunchroom some 48 seconds after the shots. If correct, this would mean that "Oswald" would have had to come down 4 floors of stairs (without the landings) in approx 23 seconds. If we add on 2 seconds for each landing, that time time would go up to 31 seconds. In order for Adams and Styles to stay in front of him, they also would have had a maximum of only 31 seconds to come down at least 2 floors. 

2.
In order to find out just how much time would be left for Adams and Styles to come down from the 4th floor and arrive at the 1st floor without seeing Truly and Baker, it has to be established just how long it took Baker and Truly to get to the stairs at the back of the building. The excellent 3d animation made by Mark Tyler offers a good starting point for that determination;

Not a valid vimeo URL
It shows that Baker (initially # 27 as motor cop and later # 46 as a physical person) needed approximately 30 seconds after the last shot to park his motor and run to the entrance of the TSBD building. It should be noted that in the animation Baker crosses paths with Billy Lovelady (# 94) who is moving towards the island and we see Gloria Calvery (# 93) running up to Lovelady to tell him the President had been shot, just like he said in his testimony.

So, if the Discovery reconstruction and Mark Tyler's animation are correct, we have Baker meeting up with Truly at the entrance of the TSBD approx 30 seconds after the last shot, which is roughly the same time as we have Adams and Styles at the top of the stairs on the 4th floor and the gunman at the top of the stairs on the 6th floor. There might be a slight discrepancy of a second or so, here or there, but that would not alter the basic elements of the timeline.

If we assume that it took Baker and Truly another 30 seconds to get from the entrance of the building to the stairs in the back, we end up with the conclusion that Adams and Styles would have had roughly 35 seconds to get from the top of the stairs on the 4th floor to the first floor and out of the building. If, as the Discovery reconstruction shows, "Oswald" could have gotten down four floors to the 2nd floor lunchroom in approx 30 seconds, Adams and Styles probably could have gotten down 3 floors in about the same time and miss Baker and Truly by seconds. But the time available to Adams and Styles is probably a little bit more, because if Baker and Truly were indeed at the bottom of the stairs 60 seconds after the shots, they would have taken at least 15 seconds to go up one floor and "meet" Oswald, which seems a bit too much time to me. 

The only real requirement for this entire scenario to work is of course that Adams and Styles must have been on the stairs at the same time as "Oswald" was.

What obviously doesn't fit with this scenario is Adams seeing Shelley and Lovelady at the bottom of the stairs. Even more so as both men, if they had been there, at that moment, must have seen Baker and Truly rushing towards the stairs where Adams and Styles had just been on. There is no statement to that effect from either Shelley or Lovelady. For what it is worth, Mark Tyler's animation shows Lovelady arriving at the railroad yard about 60 seconds after the last shot, which is exactly when the WC scenario places him and Shelley near the bottom of the stairs on the first floor. A physical impossibility.